Why are people getting Ph.Ds when it's hard, takes a lot of time and often doesn't end in an enjoyable or well paid job?

for more freedom in what I get to do

Your reasoning assumes that all fields have the same amount of jobs available. Some fields have no jobs, but some fields have so many a job won't be difficult.

That’s not true stop finding excuses man. Experience have thought me that if you dedicate enough effort and are not effraie to fail.
Source : an African international student with a BSc in biology who found employment in the US within month.
Take a guess how many job application I filled.

>African
>Getting a job easily in the USA

I just can't fathom how!

no racism meant btw, I love black guys, but you have to be as thick as a brick to not see the obvious

I'll do it because the market for PhD is huge in my country. It's a shit country though.

>have autism
>use it for money

I don't see the problem

what country? all the positions here are being filled by russians and indians

75% of my recent job interviews/offers only came because I had a PhD

Yeah, and did the pay justify living like an indentured servant for 6-7 years? Post salary and job description.

I am happy with my choice

PhD life was fun, the pay was decent and it helped me get technical jobs afterwards

I am on a pretty mediocre salary right now, but if you want to make mega bucks you go into finance

Post your salary and how much debt you incurred while in school.

Because it's fun.

Not that guy but I'll guess his salary is 70-80k and he doesn't have debt. Because paying for a masters or PhD is just stupid.

I have debts leftover from my undergrad studies - PhD incurred no charges/debts

My salary now is higher than it would have been with only a Bachelors degree or less

>My salary now is higher than it would have been with only a Bachelors degree or less
Then post what it is.

>but some fields have so many a job won't be difficult.

Such as...?

Obvious diversity hire. Quite evident by your poor grammar.

Academia is the best backup plan if the economy goes to shit and you don't have considerable assets (or all your assets were in the bubble whose explosion caused the economic crisis).

Masters are more practical for most people. Most STEM Masters can land you a nice 80k+ per year job of varying job intensities. PHds are often not left to work on their own like a job which requires a Masters and thus are constantly babysitting others.

hold me bro, this year i'm done with PhD and i still didn't get an offer from my faculty
i don't want to work, i want to fuck cute students and get grants for doing my hobby

>fucking cute students in the current political climate
the offer won't come

>not going to patrician uni
we don't have safe spaces in 2017, i don't think our faculty cares about PC at all

>patrician uni
>offering faculty jobs to students who just graduated there
Enjoy your shithole

>i don't think our faculty cares about PC at all
They don't, they care about their reputation when you fuck the wrong person

with that defeatist attitude you'll never get a job

because it's 'what you're supposed to do', like 90% of people who go to college and never look at the employment prospects before picking a degree to do

>be me
>apply to only 5 graduate positions
>get 3 offers
>can't decide which to take as they all pay about £35k on average

Sucks to be you man. You should probably kys to avoid any further misery.

Idk professional academia seems scary. Pic related.

youre giving me aids with how fucking retarded this is, how much longer until you retards figure out that you dont go to uni to do a specific job

Ph.Ds are honestly just a meme. It's people continuing their education because they're either scared of nonacademic life or want to do research and even then they just end up at a college lab constantly having to write or do grant proposals rather than any actual work. Most of the people that I know who went on to phD programs had an amazing gpa but little actual work experience on their resumes. They never really worked before outside of school but did really well academically so they turn to it after undergrad as that's the only thing they really know.

People are getting phDs because people aren't hiring BSci undergrads and it's seen as a sure fire way to get money. It's a garbage cycle.

I did a PhD and I must say I profited immensely from it as a person. I earned enough to live well and did interesting work. The only thing I regret is that I drove away my girlfriend at that time. Job-wise it was a good decision, I'm now at a place that has PhDs and just regular MDs and I must say you get a certain perspective not unlike that guy posting on lit posing as an Oxford student.
Also girls love my publications, no joke. If she likes "I fucking hate pseudoscience" and has one co-authorship in a shit journal I can impress her.

no you didn't

You too could have attained a PhD had you made fewer mistakes in the past.

>be african migrant
>receive diversity quota hire
>"all these dumbo's just need to apply themselves like i did"

Yikes, good luck dude.

Hanging onto that dream until the last possible moment.

Enjoy "teaching" at Community College or diploma mill private college.

BTW with current Title IX discrimination rules, you would be attending training and signing documents pledging that you will abstain from any relationship with students.

Said students could blackmail you if you pursued any relationship.

Be prepared to settle for ugly and awkward graduate students

This

Don't ask me. I'm finding it hard to justify college being worth it (time & money wise). As a past user said, it's more of a circle jerk than anything else. If you apply yourself and become exceptional at your field of expertise, you really don't even need a diploma.

Bottomline: No Idea.

did this nigga just assume every college grad wants to go into grad school?

I'll post my salary, don't really give a fuck.

PhD in Organic Chemistry, $70k starting, $80k now after 2 years.

I work/live in the midwest, so cost of living is incredibly low. Bachelors start at $40ish in a shit job (QC or manufacturing), masters start at $50ish in analytical. I work in R&D and basically just do whatever the fuck I want all day long, all the while lobbying for more fun instruments to play with. I currently have probably close to $2 million in instrumentation I use daily. I probably spent 4 hours today just watching youtube since my reports were finished and it's Friday so can't really start anything.

Probably going to change jobs soon to get into the commercial side of things, looking at ~$90k if I get the job I'm interviewing for next week, hopefully over $100k by 5 years experience.

>Guess how many job application I filled
I think that's actually a play on words because he only filled one job application.

I'm currently in grad school because I'm getting paid to do my favourite thing, that is Pure Math. I understand that I probably won't get a job afterwards in academia. That's okay, I'll brush up on my stats (I took a handful of such courses in undergrad) and get a job as an Actuary if I have to. I can live fine off the money I have now even though I'm technically under the poverty line. I don't care if I end up with a high paying job. That won't satisfy me. Trying to do this does, extremely deeply.

>socializing
>seems scary

>Most STEM Masters can land you a nice 80k+ per year job of varying job intensities.
How is that considered good for a Masters degree? I made that a year after entering the work force and never went to college.

Damn nigga I got a two year degree and make 55k. I could make up to about 65-70 if I killed them on overtime but I’m not about that life. I’m a troubleshooter in a tire plant. I fix automated machinery when it breaks, faults or malfunctions. I live in the Deep South and I do pretty well. My sister had a masters in special education and makes a little over half what I do lol the world crazy.

Also I’m at the bottom of my pay scale. It isn’t unheard of for guys to clear 6 figures after they’ve been here 5+ years if they pursue overtime

Sounds like a pretty shitty job, honestly.

This isn’t to say people shouldn’t do this or that academic pursuit but doing shit just for the money is shitty and you will hate your life. I love what I do. I live electronics and machines and working on both and I get paid to do both at the same time. Money can’t buy that. Some people like to cook shit and come home smelling like lettuce or whatever. Some nigs like my brother in law, a civil engineer, let’s a computer do math for him and I guess he likes it. Point is there is room for all levels of education and it’s about what is right for you.

I fucking love it. I like working with my hands, tinkering with shit.

>but doing shit just for the money is shitty and you will hate your life
False. I hate math, programming, and I really hate 99% of people that like math and programming which are the type of people that I work with.
Even though I hate my job and want all my coworkers to die, it's in an office and I'm going to be able to retire before I'm 30 so working this job is no problem to me.
Also, I've found that the people who actually like their jobs are the worst workers.
All you are doing is trying to justify having spent years of your life at college to learn stuff you could have taught yourself much quicker.

because i enjoy critical thinking. enjoy your 9-5's brainlets

I give you credit for being able to do something you hate and be okay with it. I couldn't do it. I guess you can't seem to wrap your head around the fact that some people won't subject themselves to things they hate for money.

How much are you in debt? Was college a worthy investment?

most people in my field get 120,000$ jobs after their phd

if you like math and science and digging deeper and deeper into a field, a PhD is the place to be.
Nowhere in the world will someone pay you for 5 years to invent/design/discover something that nobody has ever done

Universities have good marketing departments that's why.

No debt, and yeah it's worth it. PhD is worth it if you want to do research as a job.

People will lie on here and shit, talk about their great job or how they'll retire when they're 30 (come on my man, stop pretending), but at the end of the day when you're old as fuck and about to die it's great knowing that you applied yourself and got the highest academic distinction in your field.

Because I couldn't find a job with just a B.S.

>how they'll retire when they're 30
With the amount I make, the low cost of living, and the amount I already have saved up, it'll be no problem. I could stop working a full time job now,take a few freelance jobs a year and I'd be fine. Not everyone lives in some high cost of living shit hole city.
>muh academic achievement
If you have 2 people working the same exact job, one has a degree and one doesn't, the one that doesn't is more impressive. I hope you work a job where a degree is absolutely required like being a doctor.

emjoy your flyover faggot

a phd would have been a mistake

>Such as...?
are you joking or just retarded?

medicine. computer science, software engineering, etc

>tfw 22
>10 years at least before I get a ph.d
>don't want to live with parents forever

>can't work while studying

I want to do the ph.d but fuck, I don't want to live forever with my mom

wat do?

Graduate school is about becoming an expert in research, and a recognized expert in X field, you learn everything there is to know about how to be a good researcher (highly in demand skill) and your chosen field and hopefully push the research further with your own original research. That's the real goal.

For money there is definitely demand for your skills even if you never end up working in your field, your skills as a researcher alone means you can run a department at some company or government agency full of other researchers.

Grad students who don't go the tenure/academia route end up post-doc research facilities where they organize with each other to do highly paid consulting work on the side, or they land as head of (insert domain) research department at IBM/Google ect. Often Google will just buy scientists too to keep them away from competition, everybody in my grad school was recruited heavily by all the big tech companies who just want to warehouse expertise and keep it from each other.

You typically get paid grants to join a grad school program if your undergrad grades are notable. I had a full grant to a Netherlands university and on the side I did online consulting to make extra money, but didn't need to the grant covered most of my needs to live independently. This of course depends on how in demand/niche your chosen PhD is but even a friend I grew up with had a full paid grant to get an Anthropology related PhD.

do you get paid to do a masters as well?

you're a soft.engi phd?

Why are you even on this board then?

a 1 year masters in applied statistics or machine learning will have companies begging

not that I know of, masters aren't all that expensive though depending where you go. Look at Johns Hopkins university you can do a lot of masters there in a variety of fields online/remote and only show up to defend your thesis.

dropped out second year after senior researchers I was working with graduated and offered me post doc positions with them, so I now learn directly from them while getting paid. The grant I had more than enough paid for me to complete school just these people are some of the best in the field so I decided following them around was a better education plus I really liked the work we were doing. That's another advantage of grad school is the people you work with there will ask for you later.

>Why are people getting Ph.Ds when it's hard, takes a lot of time and often doesn't end in an enjoyable or well paid job?
Your premise is just wrong, at least for Physics.
Get a bachelor degree in Physics and you get an OK job and an OK salary and not too much of a student loan. Some will be satisfied with that. However: YOLO.

Get a PhD in Physics:
- spend an extra 4 years
- get deeper into student loan debt
- do 2 rounds of post doc, not too well paid, preferably in different countries, learn new languages and cultures
- build network all over the world, get to appreciate interesting people
- get into industry, see salary increase (disposable income was quite the change for me)
- change fields once or twice
- land in a good job, see clients appreciate a different take on problems as you bring your training to bear on the issues
- get a better salary that will make up for the debt and years of bad pay

I did that. It was totally worth it. And I got to apply more heavy duty approaches to issues across a large range of fields. And you and others too will see that you get different and better result because your training does mean something.

Reality in academia today is that socializing can leave you open for blackmailing.

>and get a job as an Actuary
Prepare for a BRUTAL exam.

I'm trying to get into a PhD program because I have literally nothing else I'm good at, or nothing else I could imagine doing after I graduate. Even if it's hard and so on, it's better than being unemployed.

I decided to do a non-thesis master's project that involved validating methodology for clinical chemistry at state reference labs for detection of very trace amounts of opioids (among other things like interefences). I applied for and got a grant that paid for most of my expenses and took a big chunk out of my tuition.

It's just not as readily available for master's programs as for doctoral programs, and a lot of times theses aren't directly useful enough to warrant paying someone to do it.

>doesn't end in an enjoyable or well paid job
that's where you're wrong, kiddo
t. financial mathematics phd

>Get a PhD in Physics:
>- spend an extra 4 years

what the fuck are you talking about? It's an extra 7 years

how the fuck can you do a masters and phd in 4 years

Burger?

In Europe it takes 4 years for a BSc and you can then proceed directly to a PhD that takes 4 years without a MSc.

Feels good.

to be perfectly honest, that was a very decent and not-to-be-missed opportunity for me to gain work experience. don't think I'd be able to get my first job so easily otherwise. plus, holding my title has now strengthened my hand in approaching high-profile positions within the industry.

Do anyone here have a PhD in architecture? What kind of research you do? I can't really imagine.

you would make more money just doing a masters in financial engineering

>Got a PhD in molecular bio, specialty closer to computation side of things
>No debt because who fucking pays for a degree
>$90k starting salary in SoCal

Pretty happy, but yeah if I wanted $$$ id major in something else lol

>why are people getting PhDs
1. “Better” starting positions
2. Academia
3. In many research firms if you don’t have a PhD you’ll quickly hit a glass ceiling

Depends on the country tho.
In mine is 3 years BSc and 2 years MSc, where you can skip the MSc but only if you are really good, which generally they don't allow even with good grades

>Burger?
no.

lol maybe that's why european ph.d are paid and worth less than american and canadian ones.

1. false
2. financial math isn't financial engineering
3. there are different reasons for pursuing a phd as opposed to a masters
4. i'm fully funded bitch; stipend boys ww@?

I have ASA membership and I don't have a degree. You don't need a degree to be an actuary, they just suggest it for some reason.

Contrary to popular belief, money buys happiness.

Only if you're poor and broke as fuck, the law of diminshing returns begins to hit at around 50k US dollars. Going from 70k to 100k isn't going to make most people happier.

I have around 2 million dollars that I inherited, I'm not much happier than when I had 0 desu.

A friend of mine has a mass spec company, he said a Phd made wonders for his business. People take him more seriously because he has a Phd and research related to his business.

I want to get Ph.D. in the future because, to quote an user, it's the only chance to get paid for my interest in theoretical science (or autism as the user puts it).
I'm still an undergrad tho, so I might change course later on.

I get paid to do what I want to be doing anyway
I'm provided resources, opportunities and connections to accomplish this
At the end of it I get to do

The company came before or after the PhD?

its not false, do you even understand opportunity cost?